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When a north Spokane man awoke last weekend to the sound of his car alarm and found his window smashed, police traced fresh footprints leading from the crime scene to a neighbor’s home.

It was no surprise to the victim – he told police he’s known the man since the mid 1990s and suspects him of several other break-ins.

But the case is more than just an apparent feud between two neighbors. The alleged victim is a Spokane County Sheriff’s detective, the car an unmarked patrol cruiser.

And the suspect? The same guy arrested in an undercover sting last fall after investigators say he tried to sell a camera that had been stolen from the same detective’s car last year.

Now, Nick A. Peters, 26,(right) is in jail and facing criminal charges in connection with the Saturday break-in of sheriff’s Detective Bryan Miller’s unmarked police car. And authorities are lamenting a case in which the suspect doesn’t appear to be learning any lessons.

“We’d like to be able to park our cars out front like anybody else,” said Sgt. John Nowels.

The suspected leader of an interstate marijuana distribution ring was arrested this week after investigators seized more than 80 pounds of marijuana, his Mercedes Benz and several guns, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

Trent R. Harris, 27, of Kennewick was arrested Wednesday by sheriff’s detectives and members of the Spokane Regional Drug Task Force, the sheriff’s office announced today.

Investigators had “developed information” after Harris’ arrest that led to Wofford’s arrest during a traffic stop by Washington State Patrol, according to a news release.

Investigators placed a GPS tracking device on Wofford’s 2002
GMC Envoy on Jan. 22, according to a search warrant.

Detectives say Wofford routinely traveled to Spokane to collected money and distribute large quantities of marijuana.
Wofford was arrested Thursday and is due in Superior Court today on one charge of delivery of a controlled substance.

Harris was arrested Wednesday and was released from jail after appearing in court Thursday, records show.

Idaho State Police and the Tri-Cities Metro Drug Task Force are working with the Spokane County investigators.

Changes to a state law put a fired Spokane police sergeant in a new class of drunken drivers: first-time offenders required to drive with an ignition interlock device.

That new requirement led to Brad Thoma’s dismissal from the Spokane Police Department after the department said public safety would be compromised by having an officer who had to pass a breathalyzer test any time he needed to start his patrol car. It appears to be the first time a law enforcement agency statewide has had to consider the issue.

Now officials with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office are wondering what the requirement could mean for a lieutenant suspected of a drunken car crash in Liberty Lake.

While the Spokane Police Department and Washington State Patrol handle similar situations on a case-by-case basis, Sheriff’s Office policy calls for employees to be fired after their second drunken driving offense.

“It’s still kind of unclear as to what that means for somebody who is working,” said Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.

Scrambling to reorganize amid spending cuts, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office is moving Sgt. Dave Reagan into a supervisory role over the property crimes division, effective March 1.

Reagan, the longtime public affairs officer and the wit behind many of the double entendres that find their way into some departmental news releases, will continue to serve as primary spokesman for the sheriff, departmental policy and major crimes. Other deputies will be trained to help with day-to-day public affairs.

Sheriff’s deputies seized 18 ounces of methamphetamine in a traffic stop near the Northern Quest Casino parking lot early Tuesday.

A 41-year-old Ritzville man was arrested along with a 19-year-old woman who was with him in his Mazda 626.
A deputy monitoring the casino parking lot stopped the Mazda after learning its owner had a suspended license.

The owner wasn’t in the car, but driver David B. Hill was arrested after the deputy learned his license was suspended, too, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies found a small bag of meth in Hill’s pocket along with more than $1,600. In the Mazda were about 18 ounces of methamphetamine, a .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol and more than $15,000 in cash, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Passenger Tara Leena Rader of Spangle was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant and is due in Spokane County Superior Court today on one count of felony possession of a controlled substance. Hill is out of jail on bond.

Rader was featured in several Spokesman-Review stories in 2004 after she was shot in the face at close range by her then-boyfriend, Reza Abghari.

Abghari, who said he was pretending to be a gangster when he accidentally shot Rader, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and is back in jail on armed robbery charges for an alleged crime spree last fall.

A Spokane County sheriff’s lieutenant with 25 years on the job was arrested in a suspected drunken driving crash early Friday.

Liberty Lake police responded to a 911 call about 1:30 a.m. that a sport utility vehicle had rolled near Third and Molter Road and a power pole was blocking the roadway, said Sgt. Dave Reagan, Spokane County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

Lt. Stephen P. Jones, who was driving a Lincoln Navigator, appeared intoxicated at the scene, so the Washington State Patrol was called in, officials said.

He was taken to a hospital to be treated for a gash to his head, and consented to give blood for the drunken driving investigation.

Fingerprints lifted from plastic bags on a body near Green Bluff have given detectives their first break in a homicide that’s remained unsolved for more than two months.

Miguel A. Rodriguez-Barbosa, the teenage roommate of 25-year-old victim Jesus Torres Valdovinos (right) has been in Spokane County jail on drug charges since shortly after Valdovinos’ body was found wrapped in a blanket and plastic bags along Day-Mount Spokane Road Oct. 18.

Now Rodriguez-Barbosa, 18, and an acquaintance, Marco Antonio Noriega-Lopez, 27, are considered persons of interest in the homicide of a man described in court documents as a major marijuana dealer.

A love seat sought in the investigation has never been found, but recently filed court documents say Rodriguez-Barbosa told them he removed it Oct. 14 from the Vicksburg Avenue home he shared with the victim after spilling hot sauce on it.

The teen also said a hole in the ceiling above where the love seat had been, which detectives believe was caused by gunfire, had been there for months.

But according to court documents, several witnesses said they’d never seen the hole and claimed the love seat had been there the morning detectives believe Valdovinos was killed, Oct. 17.

Fingerprints found on plastic bags wrapped around Valdovinos’ head match prints belonging to Rodriguez-Barbosa and Noriega-Lopez, according to court documents.

A 56-year-old man who investigators say was so upset over a $70 repair bill he rammed his truck into a northeast Spokane church and ransacked the inside was arrested today.

Mark T. Heitman, a parishioner of the Country Crossroads Church at 7011 N. Altamont, allegedly drove his Chevrolet pickup truck into the church building to gain entry Monday night, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office said.

Nearly every window, television, computer and light fixture was smashed during the rampage, which caused thousands of dollars of damage, the church pastor said.
The tirade was apparently sparked over a $70 repair bill that the church owed Heitman for some electrical work he had done.

“I tried to pay him with a check and he wouldn’t take a check, so I guess he got mad because I didn’t have any cash here at the time,” said Pastor Dan Eubank. “So I guess he decided to take (the money) another way.”

According to court records, it’s not the first time that Heitman, pictured right in 1996, has faced criminal charges for driving his truck through a building in a rage over money.

Documents show he still owes more than $40,000 in restitution and accrued interest stemming from a January 1996 incident in which the Child Support Enforcement building at 1600 W. Boone Ave. was left heavily damaged when he smashed his truck into it, telling authorities “they were taking all of his money.”

A man was caught sleeping on the couch of a Spokane nail salon early Saturday in an alleged burglary detectives think may have been sexually motivated, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

The owners of Perfect Nails, 9311 N. Division St., arrived at the business about 9 a.m. Saturday and found the front door smashed out and a man police identified as Matthew S. Kelso, 21, sleeping on a couch.

Kelso was still asleep when police arrived and was “physically taken into custody” after deputies said he refused to show his hands, according to a news release.

Kelso, of Hayden Lake, told deputies his father was a lawyer and declined to speak with them further, according to the sheriff’s office.

“From the appearance of his clothing and other evidence, it appeared the break-in might have been sexually motivated,” the news release said.

Kelso is due in Spokane County Superior Court this afternoon on charges of second-degree burglary and second-degree malicious mischief.

He left Spokane County Jail Saturday afternoon after posting $2,000 bond, according to jail records.

A Spokane County sheriff’s sergeant has been placed on paid leave pending the filing of a misdemeanor assault charge in connection with a domestic violence dispute.

David Fray was placed on administrative leave late last month after investigators concluded they had probable cause to arrest him on suspicion of assaulting his college-age daughter during a visit in September, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Spokane City Council members agreed Monday to hire a private attorney, Marletta Giles-Ward, to prosecute the case, which was investigated by the Spokane Police Department.

Spokane County sheriff’s deputies fired at least eight shots at a Spokane Valley man who answered the door armed with a gun.

Deputies were called to an apartment at 8910 E. Broadway Ave. on Saturday for a reported domestic dispute.

When authorities arrived, Donald J. Lafavor answered the door armed with a black revolver, and the two deputies fired on him.
Investigators found eight spent shell casings in the flower beds outside the apartment, according to a search warrant filed Tuesday.

Six bullet holes were found in the west wall and just south of the door leading into the apartment.
Lafavor, 65, remained in serious condition Wednesday at a Spokane hospital.

A woman identified as Kerey M. Edison, 37, was in the bathroom at the time of the shooting.

Edison told police that Lafavor was “agitated and angry” and told her he would point the gun “at whoever was at the door,” records say.

Masked gunmen pistol whipped a woman in her Spokane Valley apartment late Monday before forcing her into a closet as her child slept in another room.

The men stole a cell phone, TV and computer after demanding marijuana and “everything you have” from the 25-year-old woman, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

The late-night home invasion at 12423 E. Mansfield Ave. launched an investigation that saw one suspect arrested during a traffic stop shortly after the robbery and another nabbed by the SWAT team (pictured above) after he was hit with tear gas Tuesday.

Darius D. Toussiant, 18, (pictured right at his first court appearance with Deputy Prosecutor Travis Phelps and Public Defender Kari Reardon) and Glen A. Akers, 19, are in Spokane County Jail on charges of first-degree robbery.

Jailed on assault and robbery charges, Michael L. Olson (left) had fled police after a fiery car crash that killed his girlfriend June 19.

He was arrested that night, accused of stealing a car and assaulting the owner, Christopher T. Fuller, 24.

Now Olson, 31, is suspected to trying to hire his cellmate at the Spokane County Jail to kill Fuller.

Investigators searched Olson’s mother’s home at 3715 N. Audubon St. on Thursday, seizing letters apparently written by Olson that discuss a murder plot, according to a search warrant filed in Spokane County District Court.

The evidence could help support charges of tampering with a witness and criminal solicitation to commit first-degree murder, according to the warrant.

Read the rest of my story in tomorrow’s Spokesman-Review. Read a previous story here.

But investigators received conflicting reports of what happened and searched the truck for hair fibers, fingerprints and other evidence to understand the circumstances surrounding the death. An autopsy said the boy died of a bruised and cut right lung, according to court documents. The boy’s uncle says the family feels they’re being treated unfairly.

More than two weeks after a major marijuana dealer was found dead near Green Bluff, detectives are working with few leads.

“It’s not a case that we don’t think we can solve,” Sgt. Dave Reagan said today. “We just don’t know how long that’s going to take.”

Still missing is a love seat that was removed from the home of victim Jesus Torres Valdovinos, 25, (right) sometime before the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office searched his home at 63 E. Vicksburg Oct. 20, two days after his body was found by two women walking along Day-Mt. Spokane Road. (See what the love seat looks like here. )

Valdovinos’ roommate, Miguel A. Rodriguez-Barbosa, 18, remains in Spokane County Jail after being arrested Oct. 27 in connection with two-thirds of a pound of marijuana found at the home. Barbosa was living in the country on a VISA and faces deportation for the felony charge. He’s being held with no bail on an immigration order.

He’s also not cooperating with detectives trying to find a storage unit where Valdovinos was said to have stored drugs, guns and money, Reagan said.

Investigators filed search warrants last week seeking call records for phone numbers belongs to Valdovinos and Barbosa as well as call histories for three cellular towers in the area where Valdovinos’ body was found. Another warrant was filed Oct. 29 after detectives realized they’d been given an incorrect number.

Jared H. Horton, 22, was arrested after abandoning his still-running 1998 Chevy Malibu in a driveway along Lewis Road and running from a home into a marsh, according to the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

The arrest came after Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputy Chuck Sciortino tried to pull him over on Sunset Highway near Lewis Road about 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

The sheriff’s Air One helicopter located Horton using its “forward-looking radar.”

Horton was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated, obstructing a police officer and reckless driving.

A suspicious camera sale brokered through Craigslist has led the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office to a cache of stolen police gear taken from one of its undercover vehicles more than five months ago.

The case began taking shape after a Sandpoint woman called detectives in late September after growing leery of an expensive camera being sold for well under its value by a young man she said knew little about its complicated features.

That man turned out to be Nick A. Peters, investigators say, who used to live near a detective whose unmarked police car was prowled in early May.

Read the rest of my story in tomorrow’s Spokesman-Review. I’m out of the office until Monday.

It didn’t take long for police to identify two suspects in two recent high school locker rooms thefts.

A couple of surveillance photos of the culprits did the trick.

“We got flooded with tips, not only from law enforcement officers…but just from everywhere that it was Jenalee Hall and Miranda Watson,” said Sgt. John Nowels of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

Establishing probable cause to arrest them for the burglaries at East Valley and West Valley high school locker rooms Oct. 2 took a bit more time, but the women’s alleged criminal tendencies apparently helped.

They were picked up Friday accused of trying to steal movies and a customer’s purse at Costco, 3601 E. Sprague Ave.

Arresting officers knew they were suspects in the locker room burglaries in which the culprits escaped in a large white van.

Watson, 25, (right, allegedly) and Hall, 22, (left, allegedly) were in a white van Friday afternoon.
Inside, detectives found property they believe ties the two to the burglaries as well as other crimes like vehicles prowlings.

“We’re probably going to end up with multiple felony charges for both of them,” Nowels said.

Also arrested in the case was Watson’s fiancé, Chad Hoyt, 26.

Watson and Hall, Hall, who is related to notorious Spokane criminal Eddie Ray Hall, were described as roommates when they were arrested in May for a string of vehicle prowlings and theft incidents at Spokane Valley and South Hill fitness clubs.

Both women were out on bail when they were arrested in the Costco parking lot last week, according to court records.

Hall posted $5,000 bond on Monday. Watson is being held in jail as a fugitive from Kootenai County, where she’s charged with forgery, obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, burglary and attempted possession of a controlled substance, according to court papers.

She also faces prescription forgery charges in Spokane County after employees at the Safeway at 2590 E. 29th said she’d filled three OxyContin prescription in May that they later learned had been forged, according to a probable cause affidavit.

After her arrest Friday, detectives say Watson admitted to a plan to steal movies from Costco and said she and her friends had sat in the store’s parking lot for the past hour “ingesting narcotics,” according to a warrant used to search their van.

Hall’s young son was in the van when the three were arrested, according to the warrant.

A Spokane County reserve fund will pay some $112,000 to a man who was shocked three times with a Taser by a deputy during a traffic stop in 2004.

County commissioners approved a settlement this week with Spirit Creager, (right) a painter who had sued the county for $5 million in 2006, saying he couldn’t work or sleep for weeks after being jolted by sheriff’s Deputy Chad Ruff.

The county’s risk management reserve fund will also pay $25,000 to Creager’s teenage son, who was in the truck shortly after midnight on Aug. 30, 2004, when it was stopped on Dartford Road.

The FBI released a video Thursday showing the robbery at a northeast Spokane bank earlier this week.

The robber, wearing in a costume wig and a fake mustache, covered his hand with his sleeve before opening the door, concealing his fingerprints, then forced employees to their knees at gunpoint and bound them with duct tape.

“We have a number of leads that we’re pursuing. Some promising,” FBI agent Frank Harrill said today.

The robbery occurred a few minutes before noon Tuesday. at the INB Bank branch at Hawthrone Road and Nevada Street.

The robber, dressed in a blonde wig and a fake mustache, told the employees to lay on top of golf balls that he said were pressure-sensitive explosives, officials said.

The man was described as a white man in his 30s, wearing a gold-colored glasses with square rims, yellow construction-type boots and a purple and gold hooded poncho with a large front pocket with the word “Stussy” printed in white.

Anyone with information about the robbery should call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.

In a brazen act and shockingly ugly fashion statement, a man in striped purple-and-gold poncho, a blond wig and brown false mustache tied up Spokane bank employees before escaping with cash Tuesday.

The man walked into the INB Bank branch at Hawthorne Road and Nevada Street at about noon, displayed a pistol and forced three bank tellers to their knees and bound them with duct tape, said Sgt. Dave Reagan, sheriff’s spokesman.

The robber forced the employees to lie down, then ran from the building. A white panel van in the parking lot during the robbery may be involved.

The man was described as a white, in his 30s, wearing gold-colored glasses with square rims, and yellow construction-type boots.

Anyone with information about the robbery can call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.

The raid at two Spokane Valley apartment complexes last week was triggered by a common law enforcement ally: the confidential informant.

Versed in the criminal world and eager to shed criminal charges, the confidential informant typically arranges drug buys using police money, then gives the drugs to police to instigate an investigation.

That’s exactly what happened to Ryan J. Lund, 27, and Robert R. Castillo, 35, who face charges of delivery of a controlled substance, methamphetamine.
Lund was arrested Tuesday; Castillo remains at large.

Spokane County Sheriff’s detectives thought they would find the men with property believed to have been stolen by a group of 13- and 14-year-olds from apartments in the Pines/I-90 corridor, but they found only a stolen shotgun, a cell phone, a laptop and a small amount of marijuana and methamphetamine, according to a search warrant filed in Spokane County District Court.

More than 50 employees from various law enforcement agencies raided four apartments in the 2820 block of North Cherry, including Lund’s, as well as Castillo’s apartment at 9310 E. Montgomery.

The confidential informant bought meth at the locations several times since July, according to the search warrant.

The jackpot turned out to be the three other apartments at North Cherry, though their connection to Castillo and Lund is unclear.
In those apartments, police found digital camera, computers, mp3 players, DVD players and tool boxes.

Police suspect the teens involved in burglaries throughout August and traded the items for cash and marijuana, according to a search warrant filed in Spokane County Superior Court.
No adults have been charged in that case yet.